RHRC: When you began writing this story, what were you hoping to accomplish? What did you want to find out or share with your readers? You also speak directly to the reader. What did you set out to accomplish with this technique?
LW: I could never be classified as a postmodernist, fabulist, or metafictionist, but anyone who writes fiction as long as I have is bound to notice some self-consciousness about the practice creeping into his thoughts. And while I’m dug in too deeply in the realist trenches (and am too devoted to story) to write a novel that is entirely a self-reflexive riff on the nature of narrative, I am interested in conducting fictional experiments and in attempting to see whether I can challenge the borders of fiction—without losing readers in the process, of course. In Orchard I tried a nonchronological form. And in Sundown, Yellow Moon I tried to address some fundamental questions about stories, such questions as Where do stories come from? Why do humans need them? What uses do we make of stories? How do fictional truths differ from other varieties? What is the relationship between memory and imagination? So in the writing of Sundown, Yellow Moon I was aware that I was a writer remembering and imagining his past and in the process writing about a writer remembering and imagining his past. But I didn’t want this to be an exercise in academic theorizing or in navel-gazing; I wanted, as I always want, a story that would engage, entertain, and move readers, and in the process provoke some thought. Addressing readers directly was a way, I hoped, to indicate that they and I were in this together.
RHRC: Do you have a writing routine or any rituals surrounding your work? How long was it after you first had the idea for this story before you started writing it?
LW: I don’t have routines or rituals that must be followed—no necessity for twenty sharpened pencils or a pot of Earl Grey tea. I can work in any place and at any time as long as I have the materials at hand. But I do make sure that I work on a novel—producing new material, not just reworking old—every day. I will probably also make a journal entry, and I might work on a poem, an essay, or a short story. But I must work on a novel every day without fail. I began writing Sundown, Yellow Moon almost as soon as the idea came to me.
RHRC: What are you working on now?
LW: I’ve been working on a novel set, once again, in the early 1960s, and for this novel, whose working title is The Doctor’s Boys, I’ve returned to Montana. A teenage boy has become infatuated with a woman a few years older than he. In pursuing her, he finds himself in competition with a charismatic, powerful man, a doctor in the community.
QUESTIONS AND TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION
1. What does Sundown, Yellow Moon say about the nature, source, and durability of young love?
2. Of the available possible explanations for Raymond Stoddard’s actions, which do you favor and why?
3. Each character seems to favor a particular explanation. What does that preference reveal about his or her character?
4. Does the explanation you favor reveal something about your character and experience?
5. The narrator writes stories to explain and understand what happened in his neighborhood. Is that a universal human response, or does it stem from his personal nature?
6. Does Sundown, Yellow Moon say that storytelling is a basic human impulse?
7. The narrator doesn’t emerge as an entirely likable character. Why? Is he made less than sympathetic because of what he says and does, or because of what he thinks and feels? Or because of what he writes?
8. What does Sundown, Yellow Moon say about the nature of memory? Of memory and imagination?
9. In some respects, the narrator is stuck in the past. What prevents him from living in the present?
10. How is the setting, both the time and the place, important to the action in the novel?
11. Because of the many stories within stories, it’s not always possible to determine what “really happened” in the narrative. How does that uncertainty figure in the novel’s themes?
12. If you knew the narrator based only on the stories he’s written, would you characterize him in the same way you would based on his behavior, speech, thoughts, and emotions?
13. Do you have a favorite character?
14. There have been many assassinations and attempted assassinations of politicians in the United States. How does this novel comment on the social, psychological, and cultural response to such events?
15. What does Sundown, Yellow Moon say about violence in America?
LARRY WATSON is the author of In a Dark Time, Montana 1948, Justice, White Crosses, Laura, and Orchard. He has won the Milkweed Fiction Prize, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, the Mountain and Plains Booksellers Association Regional Award, and numerous other literary prizes. He lives with his wife in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Visit www.larry-watson.com.
ALSO BY LARRY WATSON
In a Dark Time
Montana 1948
Justice
White Crosses
Laura
Orchard
Sundown, Yellow Moon is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
2008 Random House Trade Paperback Edition
Copyright 2007 by Larry Watson Reading group guide copyright 2008 by Random House, Inc.
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Random House Trade Paperbacks, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
RANDOM HOUSE TRADE PAPERBACKS and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
RANDOM HOUSE READER’S CIRCLE and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Random House, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., in 2007.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to Ram’s Horn Music for permission to reprint an excerpt from “If You See Her, Say Hello” by Bob Dylan, copyright © 1974 by Ram’s Horn Music. All rights reserved. International copyright secured. Reprinted by permission.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Watson, Larry.
Sundown, yellow moon: a novel / Larry Watson.
p. cm.
Legislators—Crimes against—Fiction. 2. Suicide victims—Fiction. 3. Children of suicide victims—Fiction. 4. Teenage boys—Fiction. 5. Bismarck (N.D.)—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3573.A853S57 2007
813'.54—dc22 2007000031
www.randomhousereaderscircle.com
eISBN: 978-1-58836-819-5
v3.0
Larry Watson, Sundown, Yellow Moon
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